Purified

We trace ourselves back to the Puritans,

like the Pilgrims, dissatisfied, only more tolerant,

less radical than the Mayflower group, content

to purify from within, until … too much, too great a task

in England’s church to hold to simple services,

Biblical without the flash and fanfare of rituals

subject to a King bending the law and the church

for his own purpose, driving them the way of the Pilgrims

to the Netherlands and then to the New World, unfettered

from England’s reach, rebels and dissidents, seeking freedom,

the risk of the unknown far better than the certainty of death

by a King, insulted at their insolence and their desertion;

and declaring the Bay Colony their new home, a City upon a Hill,

a New Jerusalem in North America, the Puritans were strict

in conformity to their religious beliefs and practices, a land branded

with this new Protestant Ethic, this lingering burden of guilt and angst,

piety on their shoulders carried and paranoia into their stockings

tucked, New England their church now with a God-given superiority

over Pilgrims and Natives, “a light to the nations”. And in that church

grew Daniel, and John, and Stephen, three brothers, sons

of John, Preacher’s kids stereotyped, perhaps, angelic rebels set free

in a new world, fatherless, young boys facing the wilderness, confronting

themselves, the very nature of life and the nature of God, the rod

not spared, the child not spoiled, but perhaps, too, lonely and isolated,

they questioned even the god of their father, his values, his beliefs,

his dogma, and not finding the answers in this new place,

a strange place with a devil in every dark place, in every hidden

thought of young men thinking, wondering, exploring,

questioning, radicals themselves, John’s sons, like their father,

in a new land expanding, outgrowing itself, a land of opportunity

shared now beyond the faithful, beyond England’s new colony, England’s

old reach returning, and the Puritans rejecting it all, all but themselves,

even as they had before on England’s soil, been driven out to this

new world, and now forbidding others as they had once been forbidden,

driving out the unfaithful churches, Baptists and, worse, Quakers,

those believing everyone as good and equal, radical Puritans

seeking the right thing leading to heaven, not the Puritan way.

And in that Quaker influence, Daniel and John and Stephen

found their answers in this wild land, God not in the Wilderness

where the Devil may have lurked, not in some promised land,

but in themselves and in each other, in all men, in all people,

God in those who shared this new land, this New England

from whence we all hail now, we who trace ourselves back

to England’s separatists, radical religious rebels seeking God,

Puritan blood running in our veins tempered by the faith of Quakers. 

Mud Season

The fifth season, we all know it, those

of us who wander the back roads of Maine

unpaved, or perhaps living on one, daily trips out,

and the thaw is happening now in the rising

temperatures of spring coming on, the softening

of ice packed on frozen ground and turning the road

to ooze and slime, our trailings marked in the ruts

of tires sinking in and spinning to get traction

or crawling along the ridges of ruts left by fellow travelers

fighting the hill to get out, our cars and ourselves unharmed,

the unwary ones sliding into the depth of a rut worn deep

by others’ tires gouging out the earth and mud

and obliterating the road’s once flat surface,

a daily trek to work, to town, just out, navigating

around these furrows formed, carved and twisted

troughs of mud, wreaking havoc on a chassis’ underside,

and our moods for the day, cursing each other and ourselves,

just looking for terra firma, anything solid to drive on,

a steady line out, fighting the wheel and slipping car,

“steady pressure, steady speed, don’t stop, don’t stop,”

focusing on the road ahead, such as it is, slick and a living

thing pulling us into a deep trough, pushing us toward the edge

and a looming ditch; this fifth season of mud

muddying our cars and our nerves and our attitudes,

the price of living where we do, the back roads of Maine

calling us out of winter and back onto the highways of spring.

And So We Write

They come to my classroom to learn,

but their faces, their brashness show their fears

as they cry out, “teach me!” And so,

we write, and write some more, their words

tentative on the page, ‘till they find the right

words, the real words they need to say, words to tell

their own stories, not the canon so removed

from them, not the grammar I studied, and their parents,

not a form to fill in, to check the boxes, saying nothing,

but instead, pouring themselves onto the page, their abuses

by the hands that love them, gave them birth,

the expectations of others not their own,

their own fears and pains, their honest selves,

their self-destruction at their own hands, taking

their own lives, ending it, or leaving just a shell

sitting at a desk, pen poised over a sheet of paper

as blank as they feel, waiting for someone else to fill it in,

to tell them what to write to get a grade, a “good grade,”

enough to get them through, get them out, get them

where they want to be, wherever they are bound, now.

And so we write some more, work at it, write it

again, for real, the dreams and the goals to become

a nurse, a doctor, an athlete scoring points, a builder,

designer, creator, to sing, to dance, to run and jump, to fly,

to be happy, rich, content, real, to do what they need to do,

to be what they need to be, writing what it feels like to be them,

young and ready and wanting more, confronting themselves

in a world that cries out for them, cries out to them, yet stops

them, disavows them, that would mold them into the world’s form,

boxes checked, not their own, but they are ready, now, and afraid,

aware and helpless, wanting change but unsure how, unsure when,

unsure and afraid. And so we write, again and again, until we get it

right, ‘till we see ourselves on the page, perfectly imperfect,

accepting what we find there as ourselves, for who else is there, really;

we know only that we are, that we can, perhaps that we will,

and so we write, and keep on writing, writing our lives, beginning to learn. 

A Late Winter Wind

 A late winter wind blows through the trees, a strong wind

storming across the lake, rushing down the mountains beyond,

swishing and swaying the tree tops in its way, roaring

like the freight trains we used to chase as kids.

Hearing that blast of the engine’s horn, we’d race each other

to the tracks and count the cars as they thundered by us, swayed

ourselves with the click and screech of flanged wheels on parallel

tracks, bearing down on us, the whoosh of box cars passing, one

after another, drowning out our shouts, our youthful enthusiasm

eclipsed by the noise of trains, yet we eagerly awaited the old caboose

at the end, our one last hope of being carried away to someplace new.

The rhythmic ring of the crossing gate bells we heard clearly, a reminder,

after the last car had passed, leaving us standing there waving, watching

as the train retreated, its horn forlorn, slowly fading into the distance

as it rounded the bend and disappeared across the trestle.

So it is with a late winter wind blowing through the trees, across the lake

from the mountains beyond, swishing and swaying, our enthusiasm

eclipsed by its roar, eagerly awaiting the caboose of winter, the crossing over

into spring, our lives renewed now by the season’s passing, like chasing

trains and wondering where they were going, where they would take us,

wondering what lay around the bend, what our lives have in store for us

in the seasons changing, winter into spring and the approach of summer.